social democracy Prussians avowed their intention of making war, and
war abroad would serve their turn a great deal better than civil
strife. The hour was rapidly advancing two years before the war broke
out. The German rebuff over Agadir in 1911 was followed by a general
election in 1912 at which the Social Democrats polled nearly a third
of the votes and secured by far the largest representation of any
party in the Reichstag. In 1913, after a particularly violent
expression of militarism called "the Zabern incident," the Reichstag
summoned up courage for the first time in its history to pass a vote
of censure on the Government. The ground was slipping from under the
feet of Prussian militarism; it must either fortify its position by
fresh victories or take the risk of revolution. It preferred the
chances of European war, and found in the Serbian incident a means of
provoking a war the blame for which could be laid at others' doors.

The German Kaiser played but a secondary part in these transactions.
It is true that the German constitution placed in his hands the
command of the German Army and Navy and the control of foreign policy;
but no paper or parchment could give him the intellect to direct the
course of human affairs. He had indeed dismissed Bismarck in 1890, but
dropping the pilot did not qualify him to guide the ship of state, and
he was himself in 1906 compelled to submit to the guidance of his
ministers. The shallow waters of his mind spread over too vast a
sphere of activity to attain any depth, and he had the foibles of
Frederick the Great without his courage or his capacity. His barbaric
love of pomp betrayed the poverty of his spirit and exhibited a
monarchy reduced from power to a pageant. He was not without his
generous impulses or exalted sentiments, and there was no section of
the British public, from Mr. Ramsay Macdonald to Mr. Rudyard Kipling
and the "Daily Mail," to which one or other of his guises had not